By WAYNE DAWKINS
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. - I don't understand.
This month Sen. John McCain spoke in Annapolis, Md. where he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. McCain joked that he finished at the bottom of his class, and probably what distinguished him during his time at the academy was the number of demerits he received. McCain's self-deprecating moment drew appreciative chuckles from the audience.
Now, flip the script to Sen. Barack Obama. This week Obama was compared to
a haughty Parisian waiter. You feel that you need him more than he needs
you, wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. Cohen was damning
Obama with faint praise. The columnist praised Obama's honesty - though he
may seem elitist to some voters - then smacked Sen. Hillary Clinton for
appearing consistently untrustworthy.
Now, here is what I have trouble understanding: Is it just me who thinks Obama is infuriating pundits for being such a skillful debater and orator? That's right, last weekend he said that he had called those white, blue-collar Pennsylvanians bitter, and they have every right to be. And yes, pundits keep obsessing over his former pastor and his harsh
six-year-old sound bite. "But what does that have to do with how I can lead America?", Obama asked.
McCain meanwhile gets an "attaboy" from adoring fans, and shrugs from the pundit gallery for bragging that he was a college underachiever or by omitted certain historical facts. For example, at the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, McCain did a bizarre rewrite of American history: The United States he said is “a country founded on an
idea and not on class, ethnic and sectarian identity.”
None of these top-flight journalists thought to ask McCain why he omitted an uncomfortable fact: Back then, America’s African inhabitants were counted as three-fifths of a human and were prohibited from crafting the “ideal.’ McCain was allowed to omit an inconvenient truth without challenge.
Meanwhile, Obama demonstrates his smarts. He apparently paid attention at Columbia and Harvard universities, and he learned about regular folks' needs on Chicago's streets. Because he is confident and he punches back when attacked, he is aggravating pundits – to the Left and to the Right!
A number of voters nevertheless are watching and listening. Each day, I hear or read evidence of Pennsylvania voters softening their resistance to Obama. In Bucks County, a blue-collar Philadelphia suburb, a handful of union workers told NPR that Obama just was not their kind of guy, yet you could hear a grudging respect for the candidate from these voters.
In Montgomery County, an upper middle-class Philly suburb, a white woman told NPR in a report this week that she was a Hillary Clinton supporter who was drifting to the Illinois Democrat. The only thing that has stopped her from jumping on Obama's bandwagon was she feared the GOP this fall will smear him nastier than Clinton.
Clinton must be panicking as Obama chips into her once guaranteed white, blue-collar vote days before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. She didn’t waste anytime flashing the GOP attack card at Wednesday night's ABC News debate.
Obama's attractiveness as the Democratic candidate is getting so scary Clinton kept a conversation going about Obama's “relationship” with a former 1960s Weather Underground radical who made inflammatory statements after 9/11. [So, we've moved off Rev. Jeremiah Wright to a new bogeyman?]
Obama explained that yes, he served on a board with college professor William Ayers, but why is he getting guilt-by-association treatment with a guy who disturbed the peace when he was a third grader?
Besides, said Obama, Clinton's criticism could not live up to her family's standards. Her husband the former president pardoned two Weather Underground radicals in 2000.
See, there Obama goes again. He has an answer for every thing. Infuriating. And meanwhile, McCain, the GOP nominee in waiting, gets free passes. I just don’t understand.
Dawkins is an assistant professor at Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications. He is also a member of the Trotter Group http://www.trottergroup.org
